New Dutch translation of Talmud a tribute to Friesland’s nearly vanished Jews
When Jacob Nathan de Leeuwe found himself returning
nearly two decades ago from his home in a suburb of Amsterdam to this isolated
idyll he calls “the end of the world,” it undoubtedly was the pull of his
roots.
De Leeuwe’s family had lived in this semi-autonomous
region in the northern Netherlands known as Friesland for 200 years, and a
unique Jewish community with its own customs, traditions and even language had
thrived here. His mother was raised in Leeuwarden, Friesland’s capital, among
1,500 Jews concentrated in a Jewish quarter that had several kosher butcher
shops, a kosher cafe and a Jewish education network going from kindergarten to high
school.
But then the Nazis came and the Friesland community was
wiped out. Today only 50 or so Jews remain in Leeuwarden among the
approximately 650,000 people living in the region.
Five years ago, De Leeuwe began focusing on another
aspect of his roots, the Talmud, which he started to painstakingly translate
into Dutch. This summer he reached the first milestone in his work, completing
the translation of the first tractate, Brachot, in nine annotated volumes.
De Leeuwe says that though the Jewish population here is
minuscule, Friesland is a fitting place for such work.
Writing here, he says, is a form of “tikkun,"
repair: He would produce the world’s first annotated Dutch translation of the
Talmud in the place that the Nazis had tried to destroy his family and his
people.
In the introduction to his recently completed
translation, de Leeuwe mentions the “enemies” of the Jewish people but refuses
to use the word Nazis. “I wasn’t going to give the Nazis the honor of being
mentioned in Talmudic text,” he tells JTA.
“A thousand years from now,” he says, “this book will
still say that, despite how the Germans tried to wipe out the Jewish people, we
prevailed.”
The first two volumes of his translation took the most
work, says De Leeuwe, a doctor and former cantor who used to teach Talmud
classes while living elsewhere in the Netherlands. “I’m able to work much
faster now,” he says. He hopes to finish two additional tractates by Passover.
Judaica collectors, libraries and others have bought
about 300 copies of each volume, according to de Leeuwe.
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